Hey y’all! I’m Maddie.

My name is Maddie, and this is my little space of the Internet to get personal, talk travel, and share photos and stories. I'm a registered nurse, dog mom, and girlfriend to a surgical resident. Click my picture above to learn more!

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So January overall did not set an ideal tone for 2018. I was working overtime (which I almost NEVER do) in order to pay off my credit card debt and build my savings back up. I was sick with what was probably the flu. I didn’t want to spend any money (see: trying to save money by working a shit-ton of overtime), so I hardly ever went out.

But I still had, overall, a good month. I started working on a great unit, where I actually got to take care of sick patients and work with an amazing staff. I went to the San Antonio Cocktail Conference for the first time with my best friend Janee, where we got drunk off whiskey and gin. Oh, and Janee came to live with me for a month which was also a lot of fun.

New Year’s Eve is honestly one of my favorite holidays. There’s just something about starting fresh and having a clean slate — plus staying up all night, which I do all the time anyway. My resolutions in the past have always been sort of concrete, like, get all As in school, run a half marathon, do a better strength work out. Last year, my goals were to post one photo a day on Instagram (which I accomplished!), and write a blog post at least once a week (which I didn’t really do after March or so).

My only “big” New Year’s Resolution for last year was to post a pic every day on Instagram, and write a blog post once a week. I stopped blogging consistently back in March, but surprisingly, I was able to keep up with Instagram. I hoped feeling the need to post a picture every day would help motivate me to go out and experience and do more things, and it did! It helped that I took two bucket list trips this year, which provided me with a TON of new photos to post.

I have four (now five!) tattoos, and most of them have some sort of meaning behind them, even if it is subtle. My feet have scenes of my Texas homeland, and of the Puerto Rican beach from my first solo trip.

But this is my first spontaneous tattoo that’s just for shits-and-giggles (essentially).

I never had braces as a kid. I actually WANTED braces at one point, because all my friends were getting them in middle school. But alas, my dentist said it would be mainly cosmetic, so I never got them.

Fast forward about 15 years.

Now, every time I go to the dentist, he asks me why I never had braces before. Besides the fact that I was in 6th grade with no choice in the matter, and the fact that he himself said they weren’t needed, I’m now almost 30 (gasp) and definitely don’t want traditional metal braces just because my friends have them.

So, I took a leap. I decided to do treatment using Smile Direct Club aligners. I’m not being paid for this, so this is completely unbiased. This seems like a relatively new company, mainly seen on lots of ex-Bachelor contestant Instagrams, so I wanted to provide a review for all the “normal” people out there who just want straight teeth without going broke.

I should finish my initial treatment plan by April, but for now, I thought I’d share a timeline of what it took to get started.

When Aaron and I first moved in together/before we moved in together and I stopped going home to my apartment for months at a time, we tried out Hello Fresh. Aaron is better at adulting than I am, so at first he would cook most of the meals, but I began to give it a try myself.

Then I started travel nursing and moved away, Aaron went back to clinical residency, and we stopped using the meal kit delivery service for a while. After all, we didn’t even really live in the same city!

When I finished my contract in Baltimore and came home, my mom gave me a code for Home Chef, which we had not tried before… so I figured, why not try it now? I also hadn’t started working quite yet and was planning to stay in San Antonio for a few months at least.

We’ve received three boxes from Home Chef now, so I thought I’d give a little review if anyone is interested in them!